Early Thursday a.m. rawness...

…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead
“Mistakes and Regrets”
Madonna / Merge / 1999

[ D R A F T ]

While the modern / alt rock radio format was arguably cratering back then, the smoldering post-grunge music scenes of the late nineties managed to usher in some very solid creative forces like Austin’s …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead.  Trail of Dead and their artistic peers rose above glib subgenre labels like “emo” and delivered thrilling, transcendent rock that has aged well into the current day.  Songs like 1999’s “Mistakes and Regrets” don’t sound out of place here in the early 2010s, where many of us are still feeling lingering doubts, distrust, frustration, and malaise left over from the end of the “False Reset” decade.

A fifties-ish friend who often (rightfully) takes me for a fool commented that my demeanor was zombie-like a few weeks back.  For the record, I am on Lithium Carbonate (900 mg) and Fluphenazine (10 mg).  (The lithium is prescribed to stabilize my undesirable¹ moods and the Fluphenazine is indicated to pacify my erratic² thoughts.)

But then seeking out numbness has been a common thread of the generational experience of a certain subset the Gen X/Y/Millennial crowd.  This anaesthesia and release comes from many bromides; in my personal experience, prescription psychoactive medication has been a big part of cultivating my own numbness, impassiveness, and emotional disconnection.

I have come to know countless people born from about the mid-’60s onward who’ve been taking cocktails of prescription drugs — including things like behavior-taming ADD/ADHD drugs, mood-toning anti-depressants, mind-blunting anti-psychotics, emotion-dampening mood stabilizers and so on — since they were preteens or young adolescents.  Many of us were middle-class and upper-middle-class kids struggling to grow up according to Old Boomer rules of straining for precocious adulthood and responsibility.  We were somewhat sheltered “good kids” who were shuttered away from the same youthful indiscretions that our older siblings or cousins indulged in, the kids who came of age during the reactionary-cum-revolutionary ’70s and early ’80s who got to screw around and get high and experiment more fully with their reckless youthful urgings.

We unwitting Reagan-Youths-turned-Prozactive-Young-Adults had a different sort of deal than them.  A lot of nineties music helped us Rx-doped youths tear holes through the prescriptive drug hazes we were in (and other insensate states of unfeeling and seeming unbeing).  The beautifully raw, sour, damaged music of the nineties helped a few of us actually feel something — anything — again, even if it was just smoldering pain or smarting anger.

Among the various crowds I used to know, I came to sense over time that too many of us were quietly raging over something absent in our young lives — something sweet and natural and real — that we sensed was missing and perhaps not meant for us, something we longed for while we rushed headlong into the Boomer-to-Tomber ruts of our aging authoritarianistic parents, those loving antagonists and smothering protectors.

We sad kids of the nineties often found solace in music.  Listening to certain strains of this music, you hear a blend of older decades of sonic and spiritual influences.  There is even a hint of the sweetness and light of the fifties and the eighties in certain pop confections of that era, particularly at the opening and closing of the nineties, when the zeitgeist was turning.  But much more present in many nineties songs is the passion and fury of the sixties and the spiritual slow-burn of the seventies.

These echoes should come as no surprise.  Many musicians who thrived during the nineties were children way back during the tail-end-sixties fallout and fertile ferment of the early-to-mid-seventies (which was overall a surprisingly creative and reflective decade).  Here are a handful of my favorites:

b. 1965......Black Francis, Björk
b. 1966......Stephin Merritt, Stephen Malkmus
.............Tanya Donnelly, Kristin Hersh
b. 1967......Kurt Cobain, Mark Robinson
.............Billy Corgan
b. 1968......Tricky, Thom Yorke, Kathleen Hanna

It can be argued that this essay³ is folly and vanity and that the last decade of the last millennium was much like any other before it.  After all, the nineties witnessed the evolution and re-emergence of artistic ages and creative spirits seen in earlier decades.  But since I was yet another sad, lost, heartsick youth during much of the nineties, I suppose it comes as no surprise that I often remember the saddest, most heartsick melodies of those times most fondly and dearly during these times of loss and searching.

* * *

Just for reference, here are the lyrics to “Mistakes and Regrets.”

Lyrics:

If I could make a list
of my mistakes and regrets,
I'd put your name on top
and every line after it

’cause every inch of hope
becomes a world of shame
I’ve had to walk through
each and every day

And if I screamed ‘you were wrong’
at the top of my lungs,
you would never return
all the faith that I’ve lost

And there is nothing left to say
that has not been said
If I shouted, you wouldn't listen
I don’t think it’d even sink in

If you forget how to feel
reach inside your chest
Is there a heart beating?
Is there just emptiness?

Footnotes to self:
¹moods (and states) undesirable among my circles of family and friends
²thoughts that are too erratic when (a) they become too disorganized and disjointed, and (b) I break with consensus reality, no matter how mad that collective reality seems to me and those like me
³a form of expression which few of my friends will probably see, despite all of my sad little invitations; yes, my fairweather friends always reject me at every turn even when I turn to them for the most rudimentary sustenance and answers; I must start walling myself off to them again to protect myself from their cool apathies and their cautious distances; putting myself even in the periphery of their existences will only spur me to find myself alienated and alone and fearing again; I am alone and feel I will always be alone at my core; I must remove myself from lifeless, numb, overcautious people before I go mad once more; I just cannot be like them, I’ve tried it again and again and again and again and I can’t do it anymore; why can’t they let me be myself, mad and happy and (((FINALLY NOT HATING MYSELF FOR NOT BEING LIKE THEM))); the true, worst madness for me is the slow numbing madness of forcing myself to be what I cannot understand and repeatedly seeking out those who I can’t seem to feel the same tenderness for anymore; I cannot trust people anymore; they want me numbed again so I’m like a tired old ragdoll; I am alone and this is all a trap set up for me, their glib reassurances wear thin, they repeat things they read and hear and do not think about all of the crueler possibilities; they do not know this slow death and panic like I/we do; I cannot do this all over again; I must leave here somehow

Wednesday afternoon synthpop dirge...

The Magnetic Fields
“Either You Don’t Love Me Or I Don’t Love You”
The House of Tomorrow [EP] / Merge / 1999*

(* Originally issued as a 7” (1993) and as a CD (1996) by the Feel Good All Over indie label.)

Lyrics:

Lost roads and towns of which nobody’s found the name
All the children drowned and there’s no one around to blame
Lost roads and towns left to wilder in seed and snow
As the sun goes down that’s where I'd like to go

Every time you feel wonderful, baby, I feel bad
Either you don’t love me or I don’t love you, oh yeah
When you remind me of all the good times I feel sad
Either you don’t love me or I don’t love you, oh yeah

You and me in the waiting room of a disused railroad station
Scavenging for a few antiques, we’ll make a fortune just have patience
If we find an old signal box you can write your dissertation.

Every time you feel wonderful, baby, I feel bad
Either you don’t love me or I don’t love you, oh yeah
When you remind me of all the good times I feel sad
Either you don’t love me or I don’t love you, oh yeah

Postscript:  Coincidentally, I’ve been listening to this song while thinking about the impending conclusion of my ten-year marriage and haunting Kensington’s railroad station and antiques district as the sun goes down on West Howard Avenue.  And oddly, a friend of mine called up this afternoon and we talked a bit about his dissertation on rhetoric.

So right now my slice-of-life experiences resemble a tag cloud for a Magnetic Fields song lyric.  Swell.

A Fairy Tale: The Ten Year Spell

Once upon a time there were two kids.  The boy was nineteen and the girl was seventeen.

They grew to love each other and began to share their dreams together.  They sometimes talked late into the night, when the warm July darkness enveloped them.  The boy and girl would make each other laugh and forget their teenage awkwardness and isolation.

The boy and girl had one long magical night when they danced and laughed and shared wild stories and forgot about their teen loneliness.  They never forgot this beautiful night, and treasured it for all their days.

Years passed, and the boy and girl grew into adulthood.  The brightness of their dreams had tarnished a little and a slow, quiet fear had crept into their lives.

The girl, now a young woman, suddenly went mad and then came to her senses.  Then, some years later, her mind went into a still darkness.  She emerged into a thick foggy white light.  The woman had to take many cures to banish the madness and darkness, pastel pills of all different hues.  Her body grew heavy and thick with the cures.  Her mind dimmed and she often looked absently around her, forgetting herself.

The boy, now a man, took care of her and loved her just as he had loved her when she was seventeen.

Suddenly they were much older and the world was also suddenly much too old.  The world now seemed to be crashing down as if in the enactment of a bad dream.  Two tall towers fell swiftly as if under a dark spell.

The man and woman looked at each other and decided to run away together and elope.  Time was suddenly moving faster, and a strange fear and uncertainty had crept into the world.  Life suddenly seemed shorter.  The glittering towers of the cities around them shimmered in a strange new fragile light.  Terrible storms swelled up, first crashing debris on the land and then moving across the warm waters.

Many people around them seemed to be under a growing frenzy.  They sought gold and comforts and cocooned themselves with riches and multi-gabled palaces.  The man and woman watched this in wonder, not understanding the meaning of this strange frenzy.

Then one day the man and woman found themselves growing older and colder and stranger to one another.  They lived in a neighborhood called Slumburbia.  The neighborhood had seemed beautiful and placid at first but over time began to turn horrid and grotesque.  Loud klaxons sounded, and a terrible loud careening music often filled the air.  The gutters were filled with filth and discarded mattresses.  The people nearby began killing the beautiful, oldest, most majestic trees, turning them to rotting firewood.  Screaming children ran through the dirty streets, laughing cruelly.

The woman began to turn mad again.  Slowly over time she began to assumed the likeness of an old ogress.  Her dark youthful hair began falling out of her head.  Then her hair began to turn gray and wiry and her eyes turned fire-bright then chalk-dull.

The man was horrified at first, but then came to love her tenderly in her new form.  One day, in her dark madness, the woman breathed in a gaseous poison, seeking darkness and blissful stillness.  She was not overtaken by the gases, and was shocked into a new life and sense.

The man and woman knew that they had to flee Slumburbia before the madness consumed her under its terrible spell.  They roamed the county, looking at beautiful little houses filled with enchantment.  After a time they moved to a new house, a sky blue house surrounded by greenness and tall trees.

The couple was happy for a time.  They dreamed about fixing up the house and having a child.  The woman began to feel younger and less grotesque.

Then a strange thing happened.  Bones began raining down from the sky.  The woman looked up and said, “It can’t be an omen.  There must be an explanation for this odd event.”

But things did not look good.  Time was still racing forward like a swift arrow.  The years were crowding upon the couple.  Their plans were unraveling and they could not seem to have a child.  Everywhere around them in the neighborhood there were beautiful glowing children.  The woman despaired, feeling that she was under a terrible curse.

One showery day in April the woman said, “Husband, I think we are under a spell.  You have been a good husband to me, but this madness and darkness is too powerful for us.  You have loved me and cared for me with tender love and devotion for many long years.  I have also loved you well.  But I have been like a spoilt child, wandering in the darkness and fog.  I have even become a hideous old ogress at times.  And yet you still love me.  But my soul’s sickness makes me love words and songs and pictures and sweet illusions more than life itself.  Husband, let us free ourselves from this marriage promise.  This October we will have been married for ten years.  Liberate yourself from me.  Free yourself, husband, from my dark curse.  Let us break the spell this October.  Ten years of love and devotion is a good long spell.  Let it be enough.”

The man looked at his wife and sighed.  Lately he had been tired and sad and lost and too wanted to be free of this heavy spell.  She smiled at him and they laughed softly together, relieved at this slow realization.  They dreamed of their new liberated lives, freed of the spell.

Later that night she shed lonely tears, weeping for the two happy kids they had been on that warm May evening so long ago, dancing together in the soft darkness.

(To be continued...)

Slackerdom magnified...

“The Internet is the most powerful magnifier of slack ever invented.”
—unknown

Remember the nineties, when slackerdom was a high art?  Back when I was in my early twenties, I would kill time a lot of ways between C.S. and core classes at the University of Maryland at College Park.  Among them, I’d (1) plot the future milestones of my twenties, (2) learn basic guitar chords, and (3) make primitive raw-HTML-based webpages.

Mind you, this was before the social networking “revolution” and the rise of high-definition Web 2.0 “clean” design aesthetics.  This was so long ago that CSS 3 was considered cutting edge.  AOL had just merged with Time-Warner and was still considered a major player as an “Internet service provider.”  I still used Netscape Navigator as my browser of choice.  Napster was still running, straining the bandwidth of college servers everywhere.  Ahhh, the memories.

Yes, I’m an old person now.

Anyways, around the turn of the millennium, I created a primitive set of webpages, called “Meguana’s Lefty Guitar Chords.”  Alas, the Internet Archive (a/k/a the “Wayback Machine”) reveals that only a crappy husk of my erstwhile crappy compendium of backwards chord charts remains on the world-wide web as of April 2011.  Sadly, the Internet Archive has no traces of the southpaw chord chart image files themselves, once so lovingly rendered in beautiful anti-aliased 8-bit format.

The website that hosted my lefty chord homepages, go.com, stopped hosting user webpages during the Dot Bomb Fallout of 2001.  If you remember this era, it was a period of panicky, frenzied internet holdings reorganizations.  Foolishly, I failed to migrate the lefty chord pages during the spring of 2001.  (In my defense, I was probably swamped with C.S. programming projects at the time.)

Of course, if I were to resurrect this chord chart project today, I'd simply use PHP to parse well-formatted ASCII diagrams (or some sort of basic XML chord notation) into dynamically generated PNGs, using some full-featured open-source graphics libraries.

Caveat: If you look at the lefty webpages, you’ll find that the fact-checking is fairly spotty.  In particular, I get the feeling that many of the “lefthanded guitarists” I’ve listed are actually righthanded, ambidextrous, or otherwise “backwards” because somebody just simply digitally reversed a photo of a live performance.

Getting Older...

So we went to an event billed as a “dance party” at Black Cat in D.C.  Normally we go to this club to see indie rock shows, but we thought we'd attempt some dancing here in the fast-waning days of our youth.

Here is how the event was billed on the website:

Saturday Apr 16

THE SATURDAY NIGHT DANCE PARTY

New Wave, Pop, 90s, and Other Oddities w/ DJ [name retracted].

$5 Backstage / Doors at 9:30

Tickets available night of show.

So we attended this event with our friend Eric, hoping for a night of eighties New Wave electronic dance numbers (think New Order or Pet Shop Boys) with maybe some nineties Trip-hop (think Portishead or Tricky) thrown in for good measure.  We’d also hoped there would be some oldsters like us (30-somethings) to round the crowd out.

It turns out that we were dead wrong.  Instead the DJ played an entire set of hip-hop, house music, R&B, and disco.  To add to the sense of displacement, the median age of the patrons seemed to be about 24.

We did have fun, though.  By midnight the music was pulsing through the stage and we were ridng on wave after wave of endorphins.  We were moving in rhythm with the crowd, feeling sweet tides of sound wash through our bodies.  (The overpriced Cosmopolitans and Manhattans didn’t hurt either.)  I could almost forget the fact that many of the kids on the dance floor hadn’t even been born when “Billy Jean” (Michael Jackson) or “Groove Is In The Heart” (Deee-Lite) were released.

After a night of cutting the rug to unrecognized hip hop dance anthems alongside youthful Millennials, we decided to call it a night around half past midnight and headed back to the Metro, grateful for our suburban creature comforts of encroaching middle age.

I leave you with this old dance track from New Order’s 1989 Technique album, called “Fine Time.”  If I had been the deejay, the sets would have contained tracks like this one.

Lyrics:

You’re much too young
To be a part of me
Too young
To get a hold on me

You’re much too young
You’re much too young
You’re much too young
To mess around with me

Hey
You know I’ve met a lot of cool chicks
But I’ve never met a girl with all her own teeth
That’s why I love you babe
That’s why we could be
But you’re too young
Too young

At the end
At the end
At the end
The past doesn’t matter

Repeat (×3)

Hey
Sophisticated lady
You know I’ve met a lot of cool chicks
But you've got style
You’ve got class
But most of all
You’ve got love technique.